Hello,

I've wondered about Mark Twain recordings ever since reading an article from
a circa 1940's edition of the Sat. Evening Post about the article's writer
supposedly listening to Twain's voice on a cylinder stored in an university
archive, and remarking that he sounded a lot like Jack Benny. I was
interested
enough that in April of 1994 while in Washington on other business, I went
to
the audio archives of the Library of Congress to inquire about this. The
librarian there was sure that there were no Twain recordings at the LOC. He
also
went through with me what he considered the authoritative reference work on
early recordings, which stated that although some speeches Twain gave in the
1890's were rumored to have been at least partially recorded, no Twain
recording
that can be verified is known to exist today.

But you never know. One of the network news shows a couple of weeks ago
broadcast a cylinder recording of Edison made when he was in his 40's
which was only recently discovered among his vast archives. So anything's
possibly possible.

 I also remember reading a while back, in I believe one of Twain's
biographies,
that along with Twain acquiring one of the first private telephones
available,
and an early version of the typewriter, that he also possessed an early
version
of the dictaphone machine. I was wondering if anyone else recognized this
statement, and if so, perhaps where it came from.

Thanks,
Doug Curnick
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